The urban walking project mentioned earlier was partly inspired through reading Victor Schklovsky’s ideas about ’strange-making’ or ‘defamiliarisation.’ Schklovsky used formal literary methods to make written narratives pop and engage the reader. (Thanks Jacky).
Further inspiration from William Burroughs, who subverted received narrative through ‘Cut Up,’ reading text in sequences other than which the author intended, might agree. The familiar made strange, prescribed meaning denied.
Gaston Bachelard wrote that ”Linear readings deprive us of countless daydreams.”
This project attempts something similar with the text of the city.
From home to work, there is a usual route, a path that follows conventions of movement. A quotidian reading of place. This route might be driven, or public transport might be taken. It might be walked in a conventional, ‘prescribed’ manner: along the sidewalk, cross at the lights, around the block etc.
To defamiliarise, to read past the received narrative, a line is ruled across the map, from home to work. The unruly course is then to try to walk the line. This where the strange-making happens. The seemingly characterless shortest distance from A to B is contrasted with the actual route walked, trying to follow the line. The hard line and wandering/wondering line are drawn over one another. Photographs are taken as a serial vision along the route. The resulting readings of place are quite different from the prescriptive, totalised narrative of the map.
I have done these walks in Singapore, Wellington New Zealand, and Denver Colorado.
Here is the map of the first hardline walk, in Singapore. The wide outside line tp the west is the taxi route – the ‘familiar narrative”, comprised mainly of tunnel and highway, via air conditioned cab. I will add some photos of more interesting spots along the way…